We're a family that believes you can do things your own way, and this blog is about our adventures doing just that. We try to spend our money thriftily, be healthy, make things instead of buying them, enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and raise our kids to have values that go against the flow of what they're taught by zombie Hitler. Actually just the things they learn from a consumer-oriented world, but that's bad too.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Experiments with my Slow Cooker

My Mum bought me my slow cooker several years ago now and I really enjoy it. At first it was mostly used for stews and casseroles. Then we advanced to pork for pulled pork and gammon joints. But still I'd like to get more use out of it. I love using it because it's so lazy yet smugly organised. You can just throw a load of ingredients in there and then be all prepared when tea time comes around.

I found a list of slow cooker recipes and decided to try a couple of them out. I picked things that I was suspicious wouldn't work that well.

You put all the ingredients in the slow cooker. Cook for two hours and then leave to cool. Put it in a dish to go in the fridge to set...and wait...and wait...and then eat it with a spoon instead. This happens quite often when I try to make fudge so I shouldn't have been surprised it happened this time. I'm never sure if the problem is the fudge or our patience in waiting for it to set, haha :D

I love the idea of slow cooked bread because bread making has never been something I've managed that well. When I'm baking something I like to mix it up, pop it in the oven and voila it's done. With bread you have to leave it and keep coming back to it which puts me off.

You basically combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Line the slow cooker with baking paper and put the dough in. Cook on high for a couple of hours and it's done. And it works really well. The recipe says you can brown the bread under a grill when it's done because it's a bit on the pasty looking side. I liked it as it was. The crust was thick and chewy the only problem being that I'd forgotten to grease the paper and it was all stuck to the bread. Oops! Apart from that I was really pleased with how it turned out.